Belgariad/Mallorean WIP

[Midgardsormr]

I actually kinda liked the impressionistic mountains from the first image, but they didn't go with this map. The revised mountains look pretty good to me.

You might dial back the drop shadow on the forests, as it's making them look a bit like they're wax stuck to the map.

The only other quibble I have is with the font for the cities—that font's capital D's look like O's, particularly when small.

A very nice piece, and I'm sure your Aunt will be proud to hang it up.

[Gidde]

Thanks Mid!

Ok, first rework. I completely redid the base land layer, to give it a little more texture and depth. I also tweaked the mountains and forests to tone them down a bit and completely got rid of all of the post filters on them -- turned out that was at least a portion of the forest-blob issue, but I'm still not really happy with their shape.

Better? Worse?

[hohum]

I think this map looks great. I had no problem with the oilified mountains, but I think your edits look good. The ocean is spectacular. The toning down of the shadow on the forests is better, did you do anything else to decrease the hard edge? I was also wondering what would happen if you oilified the forests slightly?

[Diamond]

I looooove this. I like the mountains in your latest version slightly better, but the originals were fantastic too. And that sea/coast effect is beyond cool.

[Ascension]

These mtns looks pretty cool - interesting. I might give that style a play.

[TheSilentOne]

Better? Worse?

I would say better, everything is more balanced now that you redid the mountains. Love it, and once again: wicked style

[jfrazierjr]

Cool.. I have been meaning to do this map up for quite a while, but you beat me to it(though, I reserve the right to give it a go at some point!) I am still not hot on the texture on the forests though, but other than that, good job....

[tilt]

hmmmm it only loads the top third of the map...
but - from what I can see, it looks great - I think the mountains have gotten better, the forest could be even "duller" in my opinion. The rivers look way better now and I love the labeling of countries

[Gidde]

Thanks for the kind words and suggestions, everyone!

@ hohum: The original photo actually had oilified forests, it ended up smoothing out the edges quite a bit actually.

@ Ascension: I'd love to see your take on this mtn style actually ... I'm not really happy with the execution on this one, plus it took the better part of a month. I'm sure I went about it the long/hard/not-so-good way, lol.

@ jfrazierjr: Seeing as Ascension beat me to it, I have no argument with that

@ tilt: Weird -- it shows up fine for me.

Complete rework on the forests here, plus I fixed the missing/overlapping labels.

[tilt]

Forests looking much better now and you've added some white to the northen ones too
A point of critique would be that some of your names "hit" eachother GTHOL MURGOS ... the S is in another name, I'd shrink that slightly so they miss each other. Also with a slight rotating of "The Seven Kingdoms..." you'll miss the town name but looking really good though